Legends of the Madonna as Represented in the Fine Arts Part 1

Legends of the Madonna.

by Mrs. Jameson.

NOTE.

The decease of Mrs. Jameson, the accomplished woman and popular writer, at an advanced period of life, took place in March, 1860, after a brief illness. But the frame had long been worn out by past years of anxiety, and the fatigues of laborious literary occupation conscientiously undertaken and carried out. Having entered certain fields of research and enterprise, perhaps at first accidentally, Mrs.

Jameson could not satisfy herself by anything less than the utmost that minute collection and progressive study could do to sustain her popularity. Distant and exhausting journeys, diligent examination of far-scattered examples of Art, voluminous and various reading, became seemingly more and more necessary to her; and at the very time of life when rest and slackened effort would have been natural,--not merely because her labours were in aid of others, but to satisfy her own high sense of what is demanded by Art and Literature,--did her hand and brain work more and more perseveringly and thoughtfully, till at last she sank under her weariness; and pa.s.sed away.

The father of Miss Murphy was a miniature-painter of repute, attached, we believe, to the household of the Princess Charlotte. His daughter Anna was naturally taught by him the principles of his own art; but she had instincts for all,--taste for music,--a feeling for poetry,--and a delicate appreciation of the drama. These gifts--in her youth rarer in combination than they are now (when the connection of the arts is becoming understood, and the love of all increasingly diffused)--were, during part of Mrs. Jameson's life, turned to the service of education.--It was not till after her marriage, that a foreign tour led her into authorship, by the publication of "The Diary of an Ennuyee," somewhere about the year 1826.--It was impossible to avoid detecting in that record the presence of taste, thought, and feeling, brought in an original fashion to bear on Art, Society, Morals.--The reception of the book was decisive.--It was followed, at intervals, by "The Loves of the Poets," "Memoirs of Italian Painters,"

"The Lives of Female Sovereigns," "Characteristics of Women" (a series of Shakspeare studies; possibly its writer's most popular book). After this, the Germanism so prevalent five-and-twenty years ago, and now somewhat gone by, possessed itself of the auth.o.r.ess, and she published her reminiscences of Munich, the imitative art of which was new, and esteemed as almost a revelation. To the list of Mrs. Jameson's books may be added her translation of the easy, if not vigorous Dramas by the Princess Amelia of Saxony, and her "Winter Studies and Summer Rambles"--recollections of a visit to Canada. This included the account of her strange and solitary canoe voyage, and her residence among a tribe of Indians. From this time forward, social questions--especially those concerning the position of women in life and action--engrossed a large share of Mrs. Jameson's attention; and she wrote on them occasionally, always in a large and enlightened spirit, rarely without touches of delicacy and sentiment.--Even when we are unable to accept all Mrs. Jameson's conclusions, or to join her in the hero or heroine worship of this or the other favourite example, we have seldom a complaint to make of the manner of the auth.o.r.ess. It was always earnest, eloquent, and poetical.

Besides a volume or two of collected essays, thoughts, notes on books, and on subjects of Art, we have left to mention the elaborate volumes on "Sacred and Legendary Art," as the greatest literary labour of a busy life. Mrs. Jameson was putting the last finish to the concluding portion of her work, when she was bidden to cease forever.

There is little more to be told,--save that, in the course of her indefatigable literary career, Mrs. Jameson drew round herself a large circle of steady friends--these among the highest ill.u.s.trators of Literature and Art in France, Germany, and Italy; and that, latterly, a pension from Government was added to her slender earnings. These, it may be said without indelicacy, were liberally apportioned to the aid of others,--Mrs. Jameson being, for herself, simple, self-relying, and self-denying;--holding that high view of the duties belonging to pursuits of imagination which rendered meanness, or servility, or dishonourable dealing, or license glossed over with some convenient name, impossible to her.--She was a faithful friend, a devoted relative, a gracefully-cultivated, and honest literary worker, whose mind was set on "the best and honourablest things."

Some months since Mrs. Jameson kindly consented to prepare for this edition of her writings the "Legends of the Madonna," "Sacred and Legendary Art," and "Legends of the Monastic Orders;" but, dying before she had time to fulfil her promise, the arrangement has been intrusted to other hands. The text of this whole series will be an exact reprint of the last English Edition.

The portrait annexed to this volume is from a photograph taken in London only a short time before Mrs. Jameson's death.

BOSTON, September, 1860.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

TO THE FIRST EDITION.

In presenting to my friends and to the public this Series of the Sacred and Legendary Art, few preparatory words will be required.

If in the former volumes I felt diffident of my own powers to do any justice to my subject, I have yet been encouraged by the sympathy and approbation of those who nave kindly accepted of what has been done, and yet more kindly excused deficiencies, errors, and oversights, which the wide range of subjects rendered almost unavoidable.

With far more of doubt and diffidence, yet not less trust in the benevolence and candour of my critics, do I present this volume to the public. I hope it will be distinctly understood, that the general plan of the work is merely artistic; that it really aims at nothing more than to render the various subjects intelligible. For this reason it has been thought advisable to set aside, in a great measure, individual preferences, and all predilections for particular schools and particular periods of Art,--to take, in short, the widest possible range as regards examples,--and then to leave the reader, when thus guided to the meaning of what he sees, to select, compare, admire, according to his own discrimination, taste, and requirements. The great difficulty has been to keep within reasonable limits. Though the subject has a unity not found in the other volumes, it is really boundless as regards variety and complexity. I may have been superficial from mere superabundance of materials; sometimes mistaken as to facts and dates; the tastes, the feelings, and the faith of my readers may not always go along with me; but if attention and interest have been exited--if the sphere of enjoyment in works of Art have been enlarged and enlightened, I have done all I ever wished--all I ever hoped, to do.

With regard to a point of infinitely greater importance, I may be allowed to plead,--that it has been impossible to treat of the representations of the Blessed Virgin without touching on doctrines such as const.i.tute the princ.i.p.al differences between the creeds of Christendom. I have had to ascend most perilous heights, to dive into terribly obscure depths. Not for worlds would I be guilty of a scoffing allusion to any belief or any object held sacred by sincere and earnest hearts; but neither has it been possible for me to write in a tone of acquiescence, where I altogether differ in feeling and opinion. On this point I shall need, and feel sure that I shall obtain, the generous construction of readers of all persuasions.

INTRODUCTION

I. ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE EFFIGIES OF THE MADONNA.

Through all the most beautiful and precious productions of human genius and human skill which the middle ages and the _renaissance_ have bequeathed to us, we trace, more or less developed, more or less apparent, present in shape before us, or suggested through inevitable a.s.sociations, one prevailing idea: it is that of an impersonation in the feminine character of beneficence, purity, and power, standing between an offended Deity and poor, sinning, suffering humanity, and clothed in the visible form of Mary, the Mother of our Lord.

To the Roman Catholics this idea remains an indisputable religious truth of the highest import. Those of a different creed may think fit to dispose of the whole subject of the Madonna either as a form of superst.i.tion or a form of Art. But merely as a form of Art, we cannot in these days confine ourselves to empty conventional criticism. We are obliged to look further and deeper; and in this department of Legendary Art, as in the others, we must take the higher ground, perilous though it be. We must seek to comprehend the dominant idea lying behind and beyond the mere representation. For, after all, some consideration is due to facts which we must necessarily accept, whether we deal with antiquarian theology or artistic criticism; namely, that the worship of the Madonna did prevail through all the Christian and civilized world for nearly a thousand years; that, in spite of errors, exaggerations, abuses, this worship did comprehend certain great elemental truths interwoven with our human nature, and to be evolved perhaps with our future destinies. Therefore did it work itself into the life and soul of man; therefore has it been worked _out_ in the manifestations of his genius; and therefore the multiform imagery in which it has been clothed, from the rudest imitations of life, to the most exquisite creations of mind, may be resolved, as a whole, into one subject, and become one great monument in the history of progressive thought and faith, as well as in the history of progressive art.

Of the pictures in our galleries, public or private,--of the architectural adornments of those majestic edifices which sprung up in the middle ages (where they have not been despoiled or desecrated by a zeal as fervent as that which reared them), the largest and most beautiful portion have reference to the Madonna,--her character, her person, her history. It was a theme which never tired her votaries,--whether, as in the hands of great and sincere artists, it became one of the n.o.blest and loveliest, or, as in the hands of superficial, unbelieving, time-serving artists, one of the most degraded. All that human genius, inspired by faith, could achieve of best, all that fanaticism, sensualism, atheism, could perpetrate of worst, do we find in the cycle of those representations which have been dedicated to the glory of the Virgin. And indeed the ethics of the Madonna worship, as evolved in art, might be not unaptly likened to the ethics of human love: so long as the object of sense remained in subjection to the moral idea--so long as the appeal was to the best of our faculties and affections--so long was the image grand or refined, and the influences to be ranked with those which have helped to humanize and civilize our race; but so soon as the object became a mere idol, then worship and worshippers, art and artists, were together degraded.

It is not my intention to enter here on that disputed point, the origin of the worship of the Madonna. Our present theme lies within prescribed limits,--wide enough, however, to embrace an immense field of thought: it seeks to trace the progressive influence of that worship on the fine arts for a thousand years or more, and to interpret the forms in which it has been clothed. That the veneration paid to Mary in the early Church was a very natural feeling in those who advocated the divinity of her Son, would be granted, I suppose, by all but the most bigoted reformers; that it led to unwise and wild extremes, confounding the creature with the Creator, would be admitted, I suppose, by all but the most bigoted Roman Catholics. How it extended from the East over the nations of the West, how it grew and spread, may be read in ecclesiastical histories. Everywhere it seems to have found in the human heart some deep sympathy--deeper far than mere theological doctrine could reach--ready to accept it; and in every land the ground prepared for it in some already dominant idea of a mother-G.o.ddess, chaste, beautiful, and benign. As, in the oldest Hebrew rites and Pagan superst.i.tions, men traced the promise of a coming Messiah,--as the deliverers and kings of the Old Testament, and even the demiG.o.ds of heathendom, became accepted types of the person of Christ,--so the Eve of the Mosaic history, the Astarte of the a.s.syrians--

"The mooned Ashtaroth, queen and mother both,"--

the Isis nursing Horus of the Egyptians, the Demeter and the Aphrodite of the Greeks, the Scythian Freya, have been considered by some writers as types of a divine maternity, foreshadowing the Virgin-mother of Christ. Others will have it that these scattered, dim, mistaken--often gross and perverted--ideas which were afterwards gathered into the pure, dignified, tender image of the Madonna, were but as the voice of a mighty prophecy, sounded through all the generations of men, even from the beginning of time, of the coming moral regeneration, and complete and harmonious development of the whole human race, by the establishment, on a higher basis, of what has been called the "feminine element" in society. And let me at least speak for myself. In the perpetual iteration of that beautiful image of THE WOMAN highly blessed--_there_, where others saw only pictures or statues, I have seen this great hope standing like a spirit beside the visible form; in the fervent worship once universally given to that gracious presence, I have beheld an acknowledgment of a higher as well as gentler power than that of the strong hand and the might that makes the right,--and in every earnest votary one who, as he knelt, was in this sense pious beyond the reach of his own thought, and "devout beyond the meaning of his will."

It is curious to observe, as the worship of the Virgin-mother expanded and gathered to itself the relics of many an ancient faith, how the new and the old elements, some of them apparently the most heterogeneous, became amalgamated, and were combined into the early forms of art;--how the Madonna, when she a.s.sumed the characteristics of the great Diana of Ephesus, at once the type of Fertility, and the G.o.ddess of Chast.i.ty, became, as the impersonation of motherhood, all beauty, bounty and graciousness; and at the same time, by virtue of her perpetual virginity, the patroness of single and ascetic life--the example and the excuse for many of the wildest of the early monkish theories. With Christianity, new ideas of the moral and religious responsibility of woman entered the world; and while these ideas were yet struggling with the Hebrew and cla.s.sical prejudices concerning the whole s.e.x, they seem to have produced some curious perplexity in the minds of the greatest doctors of the faith. Christ, as they a.s.sure us, was born of a woman only, and had no earthly father, that neither s.e.x might despair; "for had he been born a man (which was necessary), yet not born of woman, the women might have despaired of themselves, recollecting the first offence, the first man having been deceived by a woman. Therefore we are to suppose that, for the exaltation of the male s.e.x, Christ appeared on earth as a man; and, for the consolation of womankind, he was born of a woman only; as if it had been said, 'From henceforth no creature shall be base before G.o.d, unless perverted by depravity.'" (Augustine, Opera Supt. 238, Serm. 63.) Such is the reasoning of St. Augustine, who, I must observe, had an especial veneration for his mother Monica; and it is perhaps for her sake that he seems here desirous to prove that through the Virgin Mary all womankind were henceforth elevated in the scale of being. And this was the idea entertained of her subsequently: "Enn.o.bler of thy nature!" says Dante apostrophizing her, as if her perfections had enn.o.bled not merely her own s.e.x, but the whole human race.[1]

[Footnote 1: "Tu se' colei che l'umana natura n.o.bilitasti."]

But also with Christianity came the want of a new type of womanly perfection, combining all the attributes of the ancient female divinities with others altogether new. Christ, as the model-man, united the virtues of the two s.e.xes, till the idea that there are essentially masculine and feminine virtues intruded itself on the higher Christian conception, and seems to have necessitated the female type.

The first historical mention of a direct worship paid to the Virgin Mary, occurs in a pa.s.sage in the works of St. Epiphanius, who died in 403. In enumerating the heresies (eighty-four in number) which had sprung up in the early Church, he mentions a sect of women, who had emigrated from Thrace into Arabia, with whom it was customary to offer cakes of meal and honey to the Virgin Mary, as if she had been a divinity, transferring to her, in fact, the worship paid to Ceres. The very first instance which occurs in written history of an invocation to Mary, is in the life of St. Justina, as related by Gregory n.a.z.ianzen. Justina calls on the Virgin-mother to protect her against the seducer and sorcerer, Cyprian; and does not call in vain. (Sacred and Legendary Art.) These pa.s.sages, however, do not prove that previously to the fourth century there had been no worship or invocation of the Virgin, but rather the contrary. However this may be, it is to the same period--the fourth century--we refer the most ancient representations of the Virgin in art. The earliest figures extant are those on the Christian sarcophagi; but neither in the early sculpture nor in the mosaics of St. Maria Maggiore do we find any figure of the Virgin standing alone; she forms part of a group of the Nativity or the Adoration of the Magi. There is no attempt at individuality or portraiture. St. Augustine says expressly, that there existed in his time no _authentic_ portrait of the Virgin; but it is inferred from his account that, authentic or not, such pictures did then exist, since there were already disputes concerning their authenticity. There were at this period received symbols of the person and character of Christ, as the lamb, the vine, the fish, &c., but not, as far as I can learn, any such accepted symbols of the Virgin Mary. Further, it is the opinion of the learned in ecclesiastical antiquities that, previous to the first Council of Ephesus, it was the custom to represent the figure of the Virgin alone without the Child; but that none of these original effigies remain to us, only supposed copies of a later date.[1] And this is all I have been able to discover relative to her in connection with the sacred imagery of the first four centuries of our era.

[Footnote 1: Vide "_Memorie dell' Immagine di M.V. dell' Imprunela_."

Florence, 1714.]

The condemnation of Nestorius by the Council of Ephesus, in the year 431, forms a most important epoch in the history of religious art.

I have given further on a sketch of this celebrated schism, and its immediate and progressive results. It may be thus summed up here. The Nestorians maintained, that in Christ the two natures of G.o.d and man remained separate, and that Mary, his human mother, was parent of the man, but not of the G.o.d; consequently the t.i.tle which, during the previous century, had been popularly applied to her, "Theotokos"

(Mother of G.o.d), was improper and profane. The party opposed to Nestorius, the Monophysite, maintained that in Christ the divine and human were blended in one incarnate nature, and that consequently Mary was indeed the Mother of G.o.d. By the decree of the first Council of Ephesus, Nestorius and his party were condemned as heretics; and henceforth the representation of that beautiful group, since popularly known as the "Madonna and Child," became the expression of the orthodox faith. Every one who wished to prove his hatred of the arch-heretic exhibited the image of the maternal Virgin holding in her arms the Infant G.o.dhead, either in his house as a picture, or embroidered on his garments, or on his furniture, on his personal ornaments--in short, wherever it could be introduced. It is worth remarking, that Cyril, who was so influential in fixing the orthodox group, had pa.s.sed the greater part of his life in Egypt, and must nave been familiar with the Egyptian type of Isis nursing Horus. Nor, as I conceive, is there any irreverence in supposing that a time-honoured intelligible symbol should be chosen to embody and formalize a creed.

For it must be remembered that the group of the Mother and Child was not at first a representation, but merely a theological symbol set up in the orthodox churches, and adopted by the orthodox Christians.

It is just after the Council of Ephesus that history first makes mention of a supposed authentic portrait of the Virgin Mary. The Empress Eudocia, when travelling in the Holy Land, sent home such a picture of the Virgin holding the Child to her sister-in-law Pulcheria, who placed it in a church at Constantinople. It was at that time regarded, as of very high antiquity, and supposed to have been painted from the life. It is certain that a picture, traditionally said to be the same which Eudocia had sent to Pulcheria, did exist at Constantinople, and was so much venerated by the people as to be regarded as a sort of palladium, and borne in a superb litter or car in the midst of the imperial host, when the emperor led the army in person. The fate of this relic is not certainly known. It is said to have been taken by the Turks in 1453, and dragged through the mire; but others deny this as utterly derogatory to the majesty of the Queen of Heaven, who never would have suffered such an indignity to have been put on her sacred image. According to the Venetian legend, it was this identical effigy which was taken by the blind old Dandolo, when he besieged and took Constantinople in 1204, and brought in triumph to Venice, where it has ever since been preserved in the church of St.

Mark, and held in _somma venerazione_. No mention is made of St. Luke in the earliest account of this picture, though like all the antique effigies of uncertain origin, it was in after times attributed to him.

The history of the next three hundred years testifies to the triumph of orthodoxy, the extension and popularity of the worship of the Virgin, and the consequent multiplication of her image in every form and material, through the whole of Christendom.

Then followed the schism of the Iconoclasts, which distracted the Church for more than one hundred years, under Leo III., the Isaurian, and his immediate successors. Such were the extravagances of superst.i.tion to which the image-worship had led the excitable Orientals, that, if Leo had been a wise and temperate reformer, he might have done much good in checking its excesses; but he was himself an ignorant, merciless barbarian. The persecution by which he sought to exterminate the sacred pictures of the Madonna, and the cruelties exercised on her unhappy votaries, produced a general destruction of the most curious and precious remains of antique art. In other respects, the immediate result was naturally enough a reaction, which not only reinstated pictures in the veneration of the people, but greatly increased their influence over the imagination; for it is at this time that we first hear of a miraculous picture. Among those who most strongly defended the use of sacred images in the churches, was St. John Damascene, one of the great lights of the Oriental Church. According to the Greek legend, he was condemned to lose his right hand, which was accordingly cut off; but he, full of faith, prostrating himself before a picture of the Virgin, stretched out the bleeding stump, and with it touched her lips, and immediately a new hand sprung forth "like a branch from a tree." Hence, among the Greek effigies of the Virgin, there is one peculiarly commemorative of this miracle, styled "the Virgin with three hands." (Didron, Manuel, p.

462.) In the west of Europe, where the abuses of the image-worship had never yet reached the wild superst.i.tion of the Oriental Christians, the fury of the Iconoclasts excited horror and consternation. The temperate and eloquent apology for sacred pictures, addressed by Gregory II. to the Emperor Leo, had the effect of mitigating the persecution in Italy, where the work of destruction could not be carried out to the same extent as in the Byzantine provinces. Hence it is in Italy only that any important remains of sacred art anterior to the Iconoclast dynasty have been preserved.[1]

[Footnote 1: It appears, from one of these letters from Gregory II, that it was the custom at that time (725) to employ religious pictures as a means of instruction in the schools. He says, that if Lee were to enter a school in Italy, and to say that he prohibited pictures, the children would infallibly throw their hornbooks (_Ta volexxe del alfabeto_) at his head.--v. _Bosio_, p. 567.]

The second Council of Nice, under the Empress Irene in 787, condemned the Iconoclasts, and restored the use of the sacred pictures in the churches. Nevertheless, the controversy still raged till after the death of Theophilus, the last and the most cruel of the Iconoclasts, in 842. His widow Theodora achieved the final triumph of the orthodox party, and restored the Virgin to her throne. We must observe, however, that only pictures were allowed; all sculptured imagery was still prohibited, and has never since been allowed in the Greek Church, except in very low relief. The flatter the surface, the more orthodox.

It is, I think, about 886, that we first find the effigy of the Virgin on the coins of the Greek empire. On a gold coin of Leo VI., the Philosopher, she stands veiled, and draped, with a n.o.ble head, no glory, and the arms outspread, just as she appears in the old mosaics.

On a coin of Roma.n.u.s the Younger, she crowns the emperor, having herself the nimbus; she is draped and veiled. On a coin of Nicephorus Phocus (who had great pretensions to piety), the Virgin stands, presenting a cross to the emperor, with the inscription, "Theotokos, be propitious." On a gold coin of John Zimisces, 975, we first find the Virgin and Child,--the symbol merely: she holds against her bosom a circular glory, within which is the head of the Infant Christ. In the successive reigns of the next two centuries, she almost constantly appears as crowning the emperor.

Returning to the West, we find that in the succeeding period, from Charlemagne to the first crusade, the popular devotion to the Virgin, and the multiplication of sacred pictures, continued steadily to increase; yet in the tenth and eleventh centuries art was at its lowest ebb. At this time, the subjects relative to the Virgin were princ.i.p.ally the Madonna and Child, represented according to the Greek form; and those scenes from the Gospel in which she is introduced, as the Annunciation, the Nativity, and the Worship of the Magi.

Towards the end of the tenth century the custom of adding the angelic salutation, the "_Ave Maria_," to the Lord's prayer, was first introduced; and by the end of the following century, it had been adopted in the offices of the Church. This was, at first, intended as a perpetual reminder of the mystery of the Incarnation, as announced by the angel. It must have had the effect of keeping the idea of Mary as united with that of her Son, and as the instrument of the Incarnation, continually in the minds of the people.

The pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and the crusades in the eleventh and the twelfth centuries, had a most striking effect on religious art, though this effect was not fully evolved till a century later. More particularly did this returning wave of Oriental influences modify the representations of the Virgin. Fragments of the apocryphal gospels and legends of Palestine and Egypt were now introduced, worked up into ballads, stories, and dramas, and gradually incorporated with the teaching of the Church. A great variety of subjects derived from the Greek artists, and from particular localities and traditions of the East, became naturalized in Western Europe, Among these were the legends of Joachim and Anna; and the death, the a.s.sumption, and the coronation of the Virgin.